Farnsworth Score

by Rex Burns

  But it was possible.

  And Wager knew how alone and unknown, finally, every cop was.

  Johnston called to him from his cubicle, “Have you picked up the truck yet, Gabe?”

  Wager broke his stare at Rietman’s empty desk. “I haven’t had a chance, Ed.”

  “Oh.” A faint tinge of disappointment. “Well, I have some expense money for you. Do you want to sign for it now?”

  “Sure.” In Johnston’s little office, he counted the worn twenties and tens and filled in the blank on the form for receipt of official funds.

  “You think two thousand will get you started?”

  “Sure. I don’t want to come on too strong at first.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “Why?”

  “You seem down.”

  “No. I’m just thinking.”

  “Well … go get ’em.”

  “Right, Ed.” He folded the money and shoved it into the pocket of his sport coat; then he sat again at his desk without really doing anything. Finally, he mumbled “Mierda” and pushed away from the yellow manila folders that seemed to be looking back at him. “Suzy, I’m going over to the garage.”

  “Do you have any calls pending?”

  “Nothing.”

  The Larimer Street garage was almost empty this late in the afternoon; on the busy street the homebound traffic roared past in a river of gray-brown exhaust and treeless heat. Inside the large building the sun’s weight was lifted by shadow. In the rear, from a long workbench dark with oil and dirt, a radio pushed thin music into the garage’s silence. Wager wandered around until he found a corner of the building partitioned off by bare plywood sheets. The officer on duty was reading Sports Afield.

  “I’m Detective Wager from the O.C.D. Sergeant Johnston said you people had a truck for me.”

  “Wager?” The blue-uniformed figure stood and lifted down a set of keys from a row of small hooks. “Yes, sir, Detective Wager. Would you like to look it over?”

  “Yes.”

  The officer led him out a side door and into the compound behind the building. “I think the boys done a real good job.”

  Wager looked at the light blue truck gleaming with its new paint. “You didn’t rig it for a radio pack, did you?”

  “No, sir. And we put in a rifle rack, as well as the special paint job.”

  “What special paint job?”

  “Right here! Didn’t you want this? Sergeant Johnston said to put it on.” He pointed at the cab’s window ledge; in red, orange, and white outline were scrolled tiny flowers arcing into a small but fancy “G.V.” Gabriel Villanueva.

  Wager almost smiled; it was a good touch. Sometimes Ed really did have a good idea. “It looks real fine,” he said.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE SHORTEST WAY to Nederland was up the Boulder turnpike and then Boulder canyon. Wager took the longest way to delay what he would have to do to himself: I-70 to Golden, past the drab concrete boxes of the Coors factory, and halfway up the narrow twists and tunnels of Clear Creek to the Central City turnoff. Then right along the Peak-to-Peak Highway, up and down the long slopes of pine-covered Front Range, gazing at the snowy raggedness of the Continental Divide just to the west. Even in midweek, the summer highway was clogged with out-of-state drivers—the pumpkin-colored plates of New York, the various blues of California, red and white from Nebraska, black and white from Texas. All driving like flatlanders, slowing to a crawl on the easy turns, speeding up on the straight so no one could pass. But Wager was in no rush. He poked behind the tourists and took time to gaze at the empty and rotting mine hoppers riding eruptions of rock and bleached sand; to look again at the mounds of gravel and stone sumped from the creek beds and only now, a century later, beginning to sprout tufts of grass and anemic struggling saplings. All that waste, all that wealth—the waste remaining, the wealth gone decades ago to Eastern banks, to European owners, and now to out-of-state corporations whose modern angular initials hinted at some new threatening mechanism. Now the Easterners, the corporations, wanted to do it again for coal and oil shale: rip open the land and take the wealth, leave the state poorer than when they came, leave their dumped garbage to be cleaned up by people like Wager who were paid to wipe up other people’s messes. They even took the profits of cattle and agriculture and recreation—gone from the state to absentee owners who paid minimum tax on farmland and on tar-paper shacks used only in the summer. The state’s residents were cattle for a new kind of slaughter, dogs for a new kind of whipping. If he were younger and had not seen so much, if he had been born in a later time and had been given different answers or no answers at all, he might have joined his nephews in their marches, blaming classes and races and economics and “ism”s. But while he could understand their anger, he could not understand their answers. To Wager, the fault lay in something more permanent and widespread, something he had seen enough of to get sick of: human nature. And for him there were no big answers—people were going to rip the earth and each other, and his job was to stop those who ripped more than the law allowed. That was the answer he had to be satisfied with; and if sometimes—like now—he felt that he was one of a bunch of giggling kids so intent on their own fun and games that they never raised their eyes to their fall-through-dark emptiness, he could only ask again: What else was there? This was what he was given, and the only value lay in doing it well.

  He studied his face once more in the tiny rectangle of the rear-view mirror. The past week had been slow, but necessarily so; a man’s beard only grew so fast. The goatee was thin but noticeable and the sideburns sprouted down his jaws in feathers of dark hair. With sunglasses and the flat hat, he looked different enough from Detective Wager of the O.C.D. to pass for Gabe Villanueva, new kid on the block. He hoped. There was always the possibility that it would not work, that his cover—like him—would be blown away. The small civilian pistol, a Bauer .25 caliber, shoved into the back of his Levis prodded him into that thought. But to Wager’s mind, most dealers wanted nothing to do with wiping a narc. Without a resistance charge, the odds favored them in court. He shook his head slightly. The criminal wasn’t on trial any more, but police procedure was; the guilt or innocence of a suspect didn’t count, but the technology of presenting evidence did. And there were a hell of a lot more ways a cop could play the game wrong than right. Ask Rietman.

  The truck bumped stiffly over a frost heave in the asphalt road, rocking the straw cowboy hat hanging on one prong of the rifle rack. The other prong sprouted the half-used roll of toilet paper in a shade of delicate pink. Truck, beard, and story—all of it had to be convincing. He had to wrap it around him like a blanket, so that none of him—not even his eyes, which might leak what he thought—could be seen. He had to lose himself, and he didn’t like it.

  The effect had already been seen earlier in the week with Billy, when he brought over the papers that Chandler had sent to the Denver D.E.A. office. Billington stood at a new distance from what he saw, and he tried to overcome his embarrassment with a joke. “Gawd, Gabe! I better have the immigration people check your birth certificate.”

  Wager saw nothing funny in it; the week was a waste of time and his new beard itched. “Did you get Chandler’s stuff?”

  “Yeah, here. Jesus, you ought to get busted for being ugly in public.”

  “Have a beer—I’d like to look these over.”

  Billy wandered toward the kitchen; Wager spread the slick photo paper on the small glass table between the two sling chairs. There were three sheets of Xeroxed contact cards, a list of the big ten with a short description: Farnsworth and Alcala, Goldberg, Flint, and Lewis were at the top. Then came: Crowley, Theodore, a.k.a. Ted, T.D., white male, mid-twenties, dark hair, heavy build, 6’2”; Baca, Manuel, a.k.a. Manny, “The Man,” Chicano male, early twenties, dark hair and eyes, slender, 5’10”; Kettler, William, a.k.a. Bill, white male, late teens, brown hair and eyes, 5’10”, around 200 pounds; Dodd, Gary, a.k.a. “Bones,” white male, twenty-two, da
rk hair, blue eyes, 6’1”, 140 pounds; and, also believed to be a member of the big ten, Cocky Gallegos, Chicano male, late twenties, dark hair and eyes, 5’8”, about 175 pounds.

  “Nothing more than this on Farnsworth? What about the arrest record?”

  “We had to destroy his file—it wasn’t a valid arrest.”

  Wager grunted and started back through the names, poised for any gentle tug at his memory.

  “Hey, when are you gonna give this place some life?” Billy gazed at the blank walls and wide expanses of empty carpet. “Since you and Lorraine split up, you’ve been living in a goddam barracks.”

  Wager looked around; the apartment’s living room had the two canvas chairs and glass table, a portable TV on its stand, a small table for the telephone. “It looks O.K. to me.”

  “Didn’t you have some pictures on the walls?”

  “They were Lorraine’s. She took them.”

  “That card table’s all you got in the kitchen?”

  “I like it.”

  Billy shook his head and drained the beer can; its bottom gave a tinny clink. “Well, it seems kind of … alienated … to me.”

  “I don’t spend much time here.” Billy was one of the growing number of officers who had a college degree—psychology. Usually he kept quiet about it, but every now and then Wager could hear some textbook language. Still, it hadn’t spoiled him for police work as it had spoiled so many others; Billy was his ex-partner, and he was a good man. Besides, now that he noticed them, the walls did seem to be empty and waiting. Billy might have a point. “Maybe I’ll hang up one of those big color photographs—the Maroon Belles. How would that look over there?”

  Billy glanced at him and then quickly away. “I think that would be fine.”

  Wager turned back to the papers and finished copying the information into his small notebook; then he telephoned D.P.D. “This is Detective Wager. I need a crime information check on these names and descriptions.” He read the list and waited while the woman read it back.

  “Do you have a driver’s license number or other form of identification for any of these, Detective Wager?” she asked.

  He would have told her if he did. “No.”

  “It may take a while without a driver’s license or a Social Security number.”

  He knew that, too. “Yes.”

  “Do you want them run through C.B, also?”

  “Complete check: C.I.C. and C.B.I. Call me at 837-9305 when they clear.”

  “Yes, sir. Will do.” The voice clicked off like a recording.

  Billy stood looking across the apartment’s little stucco balcony at the ranges of peaks lifting west of Denver. “Have you ever heard of Larry Ginsdale or Oscar Pitkin?”

  Wager couldn’t place the names. “No. Are you working on them?”

  “Jesus, no! We got enough going on already.”

  But Billy wasn’t the type to scratch unless something itched. “Then what’s special about them?” Wager asked.

  “We picked up on those names a few months back—just little crap at first. You know, a cut ounce here and there. They’re heads from California, but they haven’t been dealing heavy, so we didn’t waste time on them.”

  “And now?”

  “Now the word on the street is that they can deliver as much cocaine as anybody wants, and at anywhere from five to ten below the market price.”

  “They found a sweet contact.”

  “No lie. But the thing is they’ve been small-time up till now. Hell, they were retailers and middlers in California. They come here, and in a few months they start wholesaling. Now, just a couple months more, and they’re supposed to have one of the world’s biggest stashes.”

  “You believe they’re tied in with Farnsworth?”

  “I thought you’d never ask! They don’t have any links with any of the dealers we know up in Aspen, and they’ve got to be getting it somewhere.”

  Wager nodded. To a civilian, two officers playing “Do you know?” might sound like a lot of wasted time. But that was the way information was traded, and information led to convictions. Too bad it was so seldom shared between D.E.A. agents and the local units. Or even between officers in neighboring outfits. Jealousy about credit for a bust, jurisdictional disputes, even suspicion and security worries kept the agencies apart; and Colorado was one of the few states that had no statewide narcotics unit. As if a dealer’s routes of supply and selling were limited to only one township or even a county! He and Billy were lucky that they had been partners; they had built trust in each other. You had to trust the guy who covered your back. Wager really hoped that D.E.A. would keep Billy in the region. “I’ll let you know what I hear.” He jotted the names on a blank page of his notebook and put Billy’s initials after them.

  Billington tossed the beer can into the paper bag that served as a kitchen wastebasket. “Anything else you need from Chandler? I’ll get it for you if you do.”

  “Not yet. If I think of something, I’ll yell.”

  “Well, I got to Serve and Protect—you take it easy up in the hills.”

  “It’ll be a vacation.”

  Half an hour after Billy left, Wager’s telephone rang; the police person in criminal identification had the read-out. “It’s negative on the following names.” Wager wondered if her face was as stiff as her voice. “Crowley, Dodd, Gallegos. Baca was arrested by the F.B, in June, 1974, on a bombing charge in Fort Collins, Colorado. No conviction. Arrested by D.P.D. in March, 1975, for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana; received suspended sentence in June, 1975. Current address, Route 1, Nederland, Colorado. Kettler has one arrest in Boston, Massachusetts, in September, 1973; pleaded guilty in juvenile court to possession, received suspended sentence. Current address is unknown.”

  Wager thanked the voice and jotted the facts on the copy paper while they still sounded in his ear. Tougher and tougher: not only a small community and a suspect already frightened from almost being burned, but a bunch of people without records who, if arrested, wouldn’t give him much of a handle; their lawyers would damn well know how light the sentence on a first conviction would be. Still, out of all these people, it would only take one to land Farnsworth. Maybe “Manny the Man” Baca: bombs, fights, dope; he might be one of the hermanos, and that would offer an angle. Both Sonnenberg and Chandler had mentioned radical types. Wager turned back through the notebook pages to the telephone conversation with Chandler; he had mentioned another possibility: Jo-Jo Lewis. A little weird, Chandler had called him. Those were the ones that were dynamite; those were the ones you had to watch even on a routine traffic stop. But hell, as far as Wager was concerned, they were all a little weird. Some were just weirder than others.

  Sergeant Johnston called the next morning to say that the jackets on Flint and Lewis had arrived from D.P.D. “You coming down for them?”

  “Just put them on my desk, Ed. I’ll be down later this afternoon.” He felt like a snake growing a new skin, and did not want people to see him shedding; he could already hear Mrs. Gutierrez’s voice rise through the little Plexiglas window: “My, Detective Wager, you do look different!” After five o’clock he could get in and not be seen.

  “Did you, ah, pick up the truck, Gabe?”

  The initials painted on the door! “Yes—that was a good idea you had.”

  The sergeant’s voice smiled. “Yeah, I thought so, too. I remember I saw a lot of trucks painted like that down in Galveston.”

  “You’re right, Ed. It was a good touch.”

  “Yeah. Well, check in before you go up there; we might have some last-minute information for you.”

  “I will, Ed.”

  A long afternoon passed before he headed for the office in that lull of traffic that comes just after the rush hour and just before the evening bustle. Letting himself in with his passkey, he closed the metal door quickly to shut off the buzzer that sounded twice as raucous in the empty rooms. From somewhere behind one of the pale green partitions and across the
silent desks and typewriters, floated the country and Western music of the duty watch’s radio. A telephone rang once, twice; the duty watch’s voice murmured into the receiver. Wager swung into the O.C.D. cubicle, surprised to see Hansen busily scratching on forms with a ballpoint pen.

  “You collecting overtime, Rog?”

  The younger man looked startled, “Holy Moly! I didn’t recognize you for a minute, Gabe.” He fingered his own chin. “You look like goddam Pancho Villa or somebody. Say, are you on assignment? That Western Slope thing?”

  “Yes.” He picked up the Flint and two Lewis folders from his “in” box where Johnston had left them. “Are things busy?”

  “Your C.I. Doc set up a deal on grass. He claims he knows some dude who can get it by the ton. We’re meeting in a little while.”

  “Don’t let him pull you through the grease.”

  Hansen shrugged. “It’s all got to be looked at. This Western Slope thing you’re on, is it really big?”

  Wager said no. He didn’t like such questions, even from a fellow officer, unless they dealt with specific suspects. General questions sounded plain nosy, and a cop should have enough work of his own without sticking his nose into someone else’s. Leafing through the slim folders, he began making notes. Charles James Flint. Traffic citations only; Wager took down his driver’s license number and address: 103 Main Street, Nederland. An art freak, Chandler had said. What the hell did Wager know about art? The Lewis jackets were criminal entries; the closed faces gazed out of the small photographs with their inch markers down the left side. The single entry—possession of less than an ounce—was the John Lewis he wanted: 5’ 10”, brown hair, slender build. Route 1, Nederland. The face in the color photograph was too young to have a beard, though a scattering of hairs tried to pass for one among the pimply blotches on his jaw.